Danilo Russo

University of Naples Federico II | UNINA · Department of Agriculture

Artificial illumination at night (ALAN) alters many aspects of animal behaviour. Commuting and foraging bats have been found to be affected by ALAN, but no study has yet addressed the impact of lighting on drinking activity, despite its critical importance for bats. We experimentally illuminated cattle troughs used by drinking bats at four forest s...

Bats represent one of the most diverse mammalian orders, not only in terms of species numbers, but also in their ecology and life histories. Many species are known to use ephemeral and/or unpredictable resources that require substantial investment to find and defend, and also engage in social interactions, thus requiring significant levels of socia...

Artificial illumination at night represents an increasingly concerning threat to ecosystems worldwide, altering persistence, behaviour, physiology and fitness of many organisms and their mutual interactions, in the long-term affecting ecosystem functioning. Bats are very sensitive to artificial light at night because they are obligate nocturnal and...

The altitudinal distribution of animals and changes in their body size are effective indicators of climate change. Bats are sensitive to climate change due to their dependence on temperature during critical life stages. However, long-term studies documenting responses over extended periods are rare. We present a 24-year investigation of Myotis daub...

Forest islands in agricultural landscapes may be vital for biodiversity conservation, providing habitats for a variety of species, including bats. Our study focused on a forest island in NE Italy, where we observed mixed-species groups of giant (Nyctalus lasiopterus) and common (Nyctalus noctula) noctules roosting at the site. The giant noctule is...

Conventional agriculture occupies a substantial portion of Earth's terrestrial surface and adversely affects biodiversity through pesticide spread, mechanisation, and loss of spatial and temporal heterogeneity of farmed landscapes. Consequently, conventional agriculture has become a primary target of many restoration projects operating at various s...

Studying hybrid zones that form between morphologically cryptic taxa offers valuable insights into the mechanisms of cryptic speciation and the evolution of reproductive barriers. Although hybrid zones have long been the focus of evolutionary studies, the awareness of cryptic hybrid zones increased recently due to rapidly growing evidence of biolog...

We comment on a recent study (Vasenkov et al. in Dokl Biol Sci 513:395-399, 2023, https:// doi. org/ 10. 1134/ S0012 49662 37007 46) presenting the movement paths of three greater noctule bats (Nyctalus lasiopterus), two juveniles and an adult, tracked from Russia in September-October 2020 and 2021, with particular emphasis on the unprecedented str...

Mounting evidence indicates the non-consumptive effects of predators significantly impact prey physiology, ecology and behaviour. Passerine birds experience adverse effects on nesting and reproductive success when in proximity to predators. Fear of predators is context-dependent and influenced by hunting habitats and foraging strategies. While some...

Human influence has historically exerted a major driving in creating novel ecological niches. Although the controlled use of fire by ancient humans probably played a significant role by attracting positive phototactic prey and favour foraging by insectivorous vertebrates, no study has ever explored this possibility. Using a multidisciplinary approa...

Organic farming is an essential component of sustainable agriculture that can help maintain biodiversity in agricultural landscapes, providing benefits for both human well-being and environmental conservation. Recent studies have highlighted the vital role of insectivorous bats in farmland ecosystems in controlling pest insect populations. Our rese...

Animal size, a trait sensitive to spatial and temporal variables, is a key element in ecological and evolutionary dynamics. In the context of climate change, there is evidence that some bat species are increasing their body size via phenotypic responses to higher temperatures at maternity roosts. To test the generality of this response, we conducte...

Today, the issue of biodiversity conservation is, more than ever before, one of primary importance since it has become common knowledge that biodiversity provides many services that are relevant to the sustaining of ecological integrity and, so, for the benefit of humanity. Within this framework, rural areas are particularly exposed to degradation...

Domestic dogs Canis familiaris may cause a range of impacts on wildlife through preda-tion, competition, pathogen transmission, harassment and hybridisation with wolves and other wild canids, yet such effects are less known than those of other domestic species. In this work, we have combined citizen science data and information collected by scienti...

The isolation of islands has played a significant role in shaping the unique evolutionary histories of many species of flora and fauna, including bats. One notable example is the Madeira pipistrelle (Pipistrellus maderensis), which inhabits the Macaronesian archipelagos of the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands. Despite the high biogeographic...

Fighting insect pests is a major challenge for agriculture worldwide, and biological control and integrated pest management constitute well-recognised, cost-effective ways to prevent and overcome this problem. Bats are important arthropod predators globally and, in recent decades, an increasing number of studies have focused on the role of bats as...

Knowledge of species' functional traits is essential for understanding biodiversity patterns, predicting the impacts of global environmental changes, and assessing the efficiency of conservation measures. Bats are major components of mammalian diversity and occupy a variety of ecological niches and geographic distributions. However, an extensive co...

Climate change is exerting a broad range of (mostly adverse) effects on biodiversity, and more are expected under future scenarios. Impacts on species that deliver key ecosystem services, such as bats, are especially concerning, so their better understanding is key to preventing or mitigating them. Due to their physiological requirements, bats are...

Systematic wildlife surveillance is important to aid the prevention of zoonotic infections that jeopardize human health and undermine biodiversity. Toxoplasma gondii is an opportunistic zoonotic protozoan that can infect all endothermic vertebrates, causing severe disease in immuno-compromised humans and cases of congenital transmission. Humans can...

Organic agriculture is often deemed effective in conserving and promoting biodiversity, yet most studies have so far only focused on farmland in temperate areas and a few taxonomic groups, mainly birds and arthropods. Mediterranean agroecosystems host considerable biodiversity, and their wildlife likely delivers quantitatively important ecosystem s...

Individual and species traits may determine the functional relationships between predators and their prey, with clear consequences for the ecosystem services potentially associated with predation. Bats are well-known potential deliverers of ecosystem services in agroecosystems through predation of pest arthropods that may affect crop production. He...

Preserving biodiversity and the ecosystem services (ES) it provides is vital to sustainability. With over half of all people living in cities, urban ES play an especially important role. Bats are the most speciose mammalian group in many cities and may provide a variety of important ES. This chapter explores the available literature and provides un...

Cities are characterised by low amounts of natural habitat, so their human populations, i.e. urbanites, are expected to be poorly connected to and knowledgeable about the natural world, despite high biodiversity levels being increasingly recorded in unconventional, urban habitats. Such disconnection may raise potential conservation issues for wildl...

This plan gives a review of the historical distribution information available for the Madeira bat Pipistrellus maderensis and the new information regarding the results of the remote field surveys undertaken using ultrasound detectors and thermal sensing to detect the presence and behaviour of the Madeira bat. The Action plans intend to use availab...

Coniferous forests make a significant contribution to Portuguese GNP, yet they have been suffering severe losses since the late 1990s due to the plague of the invasive pine processionary moth (PPM). The fight against the PPM consists essentially of using pesticides, whose excessive use has several negative impacts on public health and the environme...

Context Urbanization and its associated impacts on biodiversity are increasing globally. There is a need to enhance our understanding of species responses to inform strategies for sustainable urbanization. Objectives Three extensive bird monitoring campaigns took place over the last three decades in the city of Naples, Italy, providing a comprehen...

Understanding how species respond to climate change is key to informing vulnerability assessments and designing effective conservation strategies, yet research efforts on wildlife responses to climate change fail to deliver a representative overview due to inherent biases. Bats are a species‐rich, globally distributed group of organisms that are th...

Forest ecosystems are fundamental to the conservation of global biodiversity and human wellbeing, hosting high numbers of species worldwide, and providing essential regulatory, provisioning, and cultural ecosystem services. The increasing impact of drivers of environmental changes such as climate change and biological invasions endangers forests, o...

23 Islands often comprise unique faunal assemblages, particularly when they lie at the boundaries of 24 different bioregions or are located at a great distance from the mainland. Bats are among the few 25 mammals that can regularly be found on islands around the world, yet knowledge of insular bat 26 assemblages is often poor and anecdotal. Here we...

Supplementary materials of the article "The rise and fall of an alien: why the successful colonizer Littorina saxatilis failed to invade the Mediterranean Sea"

One serious concern associated with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is that the virus might spill back from humans to wildlife, which would render some animal species reservoirs of the human virus. We assessed the potential circulation of SARS-CoV-2 caused by reverse infection from humans to bats, by performing bat surveillance from different sites in Cent...

Understanding what determines range expansion or extinction is crucial to predict the success of biological invaders. We tackled this long-standing question from an unparalleled perspective using the failed expansions in Littorina saxatilis and investigated its present and past habitat suitability in Europe through Ecological Niche Modelling. This...

A data set of terrestrial, volant, and marine mammal occurrences in Portugal

Mimicry is one of the most fascinating phenomena in nature¹. Mimicry traits often reflect complex, finely tuned, and sometimes extravagant relationships among species and have evolved to deceive predators or prey. Indeed, mimicry has most often evolved to discourage predation: the ‘mimic’ exhibits phenotypic convergence towards a non-related ‘model...

Mammals are threatened worldwide, with ~26% of all species being included in the IUCN threatened categories. This overall pattern is primarily associated with habitat loss or degradation, and human persecution for terrestrial mammals, and pollution, open net fishing, climate change, and prey depletion for marine mammals. Mammals play a key role in...

The recent pandemic and other environmental concerns have resulted in restrictions on research and surveys involving capture and handling bats. While acoustic surveys have been widely used as an alternative survey method, in this study, we show how photographic surveys can offer an important contribution to study and survey bats. We outline approac...

Landscape management is a key tool for wildlife conservation. This is especially important in protected areas, where conservation, local resource harvesting such as timber harvesting, and public accessibility are potentially conflicting needs that eventually influence wildlife ecology and behaviour. We studied the spatial behaviour of a forest spec...

Understanding what determines range expansion or extinction is crucial to predict the success of biological invaders and effectively deal with biodiversity changes. We tackled this long-standing question from an unparalleled perspective using the failed expansions in Littorina saxatilis and investigating its present and past habitat suitability in...

Islands host high numbers of endemic species, and the latter are especially exposed to human-driven habitat alteration because their population size is constrained by the limited space and resources found in insular systems. Extreme events linked with climate change and direct anthropogenic stressors may synergistically affect endemic species, and...

Characterization of the echolocation plasticity of the Kuhl's pipistrelle, their social calls and feding buzzes in order to improve identification based on acoustic data.

Aim The need to forecast range shifts under future climate change has motivated an increasing interest in better understanding the role of biotic interactions in driving diversity patterns. The contribution of biotic interactions to shaping broad-scale species distributions is, however, still debated, partly due to the difficulty of detecting their...

Bats show responses to anthropogenic stressors linked to changes in other ecosystem components such as insects, and as K-selected mammals, exhibit fast population declines. This speciose, widespread mammal group shows an impressive trophic diversity and provides key ecosystem services. For these and other reasons, bats might act as suitable bioindi...

SARS-­CoV-­2, the virus that caused the COVID-­19 pandemic, is genomically similar to a SARS-­like beta-­ coronavirus found in Asian rhinolophid bats. This evolutionary relationship impressed the global media, which then em phasised bats as key actors in the spillover that resulted in the pandemic. In this study, we highlight changes in the traditi...

Morphological, functional and behavioural adaptations of bats are among the most diverse within mammals. A strong association between bat skull morphology and feeding behaviour has been suggested previously. However, morphological variation related to other drivers of adaptation, in particular echolocation, remains understudied. We assessed variati...

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a pervasive form of pollution largely affecting wildlife, from individual behaviour to community structure and dynamics. As nocturnal mammals, bats are often adversely affected by ALAN, yet some “light-opportunistic” species exploit it by hunting insects swarming near lights. Here we used two potentially competin...

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a pervasive form of pollution largely affecting wildlife, from individual behaviour to community structure and dynamics. As nocturnal mammals, bats are often adversely affected by ALAN, yet some “light-tolerant” species exploit it by hunting insects swarming near lights. Here we used two potentially competing pip...

Wind turbines (WTs) frequently kill bats worldwide. During environmental impact assessments, consultant ecologists often use automated ultrasonic detectors (AUDs) to estimate the activity and identity of bats in the zone of highest mortality risk at WTs in order to formulate mitigation schemes, such as increased curtailment speeds to prevent casual...

1. Climate change is among the key anthropogenic factors affecting species' distribution, with important consequences for conservation. However, little is known concerning the consequences of distributional changes on community-level interactions, and responses by generalist species might have many ecological implications in terms of novel interact...

Aim Our understanding of the biological strategies employed by species to cope with challenges posed by aridity is still limited. Despite being sensitive to water loss, bats successfully inhabit a wide range of arid lands. We here investigated how functional traits of bat assemblages vary along the global aridity gradient to identify traits that fa...

Bats are often unfairly depicted as the direct culprit in the current COVID-19 pandemic, yet the real causes of this and other zoonotic spillover events should be sought in the human impact on the environment, including the spread of domestic animals. Here, we discuss bat predation by cats as a phenomenon bringing about zoonotic risks and illustrat...

Variation in body size is thought as one of the main responses to climate change, yet studies exploring the existence of this pattern are limited by the scarcity of long temporal datasets. Bats are promising candidates for the occurrence of climate-driven changes in body size because their life cycle is highly sensitive to ambient temperature. Alth...

Traditional farming, where livestock is seasonally managed as free ranging and the use of drugs is reduced or absent, may prove beneficial to biodiversity by fostering the occurrence of spatial heterogeneity, and increasing the availability of trophic resources to wildlife. Previous work indicates that the presence of cattle in lowlands leads to an...

Human-generated noise can deleteriously affect many animals. Echolocating bats, which crucially depend on sound for their activity, might therefore serve as bioindicators to quantify the ecological effects of sound pollution. While the influence of sound pollution on animal behaviour has been widely studied, the impact of music is almost unknown. W...

Body size in animals commonly shows geographic and temporal variations that may depend upon several environmental drivers, including climatic conditions, productivity, geography and species interactions. The topic of body size trends across time has gained momentum in recent years since this has been proposed as a third universal response to climat...

Wildfires shape ecosystems globally, yet little is known on their effects on wildlife distribution and spatial behaviour. We used bats as models to test the effects of fire on ecosystems because they are multi‐habitat specialists and feature ecological and life traits such as behavioural plasticity and longevity that make them able to respond to bo...

The genus Crocidura (Eulipotyphla, Soricidae) is the most speciose genus amongst mammals, i.e., it includes the highest number of species. Different species are distinguished by skull morphology, which often prevents the identification of individuals in the field and limits research on these species' ecology and biology. We combined species distrib...

Background The Schreiber’s bat, Miniopterus schreibersii, is adapted to long-distance flight, yet long distance movements have only been recorded sporadically using capture-mark-recapture. In this study, we used the hydrogen isotopic composition of 208 wing and 335 fur specimens from across the species' European range to test the hypothesis that th...

The Handbook summarizes all the key steps in conducting an acoustic survey of a bat community, including project planning, strategies for data collection, approaches to analysis and interpretation, a guide to purchasing a bat detector, and a series of case studies. Chapter 1 (“Introduction to bat echolocation”) provides a broad introduction to the...

During the glacial episodes of the Quaternary, European forests were restricted to small favourable spots, namely refugia, acting as biodiversity reservoirs. the Iberian, Italian and Balkan peninsulas have been considered as the main glacial refugia of trees in Europe. In this study, we estimate the composition of the last glacial forest in a coast...